


When a Shadow Will Cast Out the Light

by acquaintedwithvice



Category: RWBY
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Drama, F/F, F/M, Implied/Referenced Incest, Light BDSM, Older Man/Younger Woman, Pseudo-Incest, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-05
Packaged: 2020-09-27 22:15:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20415169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acquaintedwithvice/pseuds/acquaintedwithvice
Summary: “Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.” - Terry PratchettA series of generally unrelated vignettes; painting scenes of heroes when darkness falls.





	1. Escape

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ironwood/Weiss

She flees the party, or is removed - one looks very much like the other through the haze of sparkling gossip and cheap champagne. Married into the Schnee dynasty for nearly thirty years now and Jacque has yet to learn class. Ironwood sneers at the rigid-backed waiters and the stage whispers of the guests, imagining he can transform the insipid bubbly in his glass into scotch by sheer force of will. Socialites of varying stripes, from the aging dowagers to their unmarried daughters and nieces, flutter about him in a cloud of perfume and vapid small talk. They press him to dance, invading his space; polished fingernails glittering with family jewels sliding in an overly familiar manner over the starched white fabric of his uniform, daring to be curious about how much of him, exactly, is a marvel of Atlas engineering. He stays as long as he can stomach it, but patience, like cheap champagne, eventually runs out.

Military issue boots, polished to a reflective shine, click a slow staccato on the marble of the halls as he stalks through the estate. Though the manor is vast, it is mercifully empty - most guests too intent on guzzling down Jacque’s halfhearted largesse to bother sneaking off on their own. The palatial house echoes with a silence that runs deeper than the absence of noise, the absence of people… It is as cold and unfeeling as a tomb, and despite all he has lived through it makes him shiver. The whisper of an icy wind against his face catches his attention, makes him halt midstride and turn - noting with a sudden rush of adrenaline that an unremarkable little alcolve is lit by a spill of silver, that a door to the outside world stands ajar.

Somehow, he is unsurprised to find her with the moon. They seem natural companions, her platinum silhouette like a blue shadow against its broken face. She stands on the railing of the balcony, balance flawless in the buffeting wind, above the interminable drop. Her blade - Myrtenaster - glimmers in her hand, a friend to the moon or no one. Her back is to him, and he cannot tell if she intends suicide or a more personal betrayal - her father’s moratorium on contact with the outside world driving her slowly mad. Untapped power, wasted potential, railing against her bonds like lightening captured in a bottle. The sensation of being limited, _lesser_ \- missing the better half of the self. He can relate.

Mindful of her lethal blade, approaching with his most dangerous side to hers, he steps near - breath held more as a talisman than as a bid for silence over the howling of the wind. Both hands in white gloves, he reaches up and grips her waist, and drags her backwards from the precipice. With a yelp of outrage, she sweeps her sword - reaction time and range of motion both exceeding his expectations, and leaving a narrow slash through the pressed white sleeve. It does nothing - _nothing_ \- to the metal beneath; he does not even react. He stares at her in the light of the moon as if he has never seen her before, as if the flush of fury creeping over the knifeblades of her cheekbones has nothing to do with him.

“Ironwood,” she whispers finally, words more like a suggestion than an audible greeting. The gale whistles about the tower, whipping her hair back from her face, tinting her skin pink in the illusion of an embarrassed blush, and still he stares. “What are you doing here?” She holsters her blade, skin prickling with impatience. He is an honored guest of her father’s, his presence at the party - especially after his spectacular display of marksmanship - will be missed. Every moment he stands here is another moment she risks further discovery and public humiliation and yet…

_She’s the only one here making any sense._

“Same thing you’re doing,” he rasps, all at once acutely aware of how very drunk one can become on subpar champagne and misery. He crowds her and she gives ground, but there is more curiosity than fear in her eyes. “Trying to escape.” Her back hits the wall and she feels the bite of chilly granite sharp against her shoulders; feels the hardness of steel and the hardness of muscle beneath her palms as she raises her hands to push him away and then _doesn’t. _She raises her chin, imperious; stares him down as if there is nothing in the world less intimidating than him. A girl, balanced above a howling chasm by a space no wider than the blade of her sword, unafraid. She makes him feel small. _He_ would have been afraid, accustomed as he is to clinging to life no matter the cost. But she is a Schnee, and dust glitters in her blood, in her bones - a force of nature, trapped in ice, sharp as winter. Defiance, made manifest in Snow White flesh... He watches her polar eyes, as fiercely impersonal as the snowstorm; sees the moment she decides what sort of an escape he will provide.

He should not be surprised when her lips meet his, but he is - suddenly wrong-footed, staggered by the small, slim figure he has literally backed into a corner. Unimpressed by his amateurish confusion, she bites him sharply; and suddenly there is nothing but the paradoxical, white-flame heat of her, small hands tight like talons on the lines of his uniform and ready to _tear. _He cannot quite help the bestial growl that rips from somewhere beneath his chest plate - it has been _so long,_ and he knows that she knows it, trained from childhood to exploit weakness.

“Tell me, General,” and her words are a hot huff against his lips; she presses palms to his chest, holds him back as she graces him with a wintry smirk. “On the subject of escape. What did you have in mind?”


	2. Beholden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ironwood/Weiss

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continued from _Escape_. For BrokenLevel.

He owes her a debt, and it cries out to be paid.

She strolls through the hermetically hissing dust-powered doors as if she owns the place, as if she is heiress here, as well. Her blade she leaves by the door, a message of trust - or at least, unconcern. Huntresses are generally considered more deadly than Hunters. Her bearing is confident, teetering on the edge of arrogant; and while he knows that it must be at least partly for show, it has the desired effect - he forgets her youth, forgets her surname… Forgets - for a moment, at least - the violent turmoil gripping his country and many others. Forgets everything, except the way her legs seem to go on forever as she shimmies out of the cocktail dress and leaves it on the floor. She shoots him a look of mild chastisement, one scarred brow raised. “Are you just going to stand there, or are you going to fix me a drink?”

He does not answer, merely stares. Diverting the mental energy required to power his prosthesis seems impossible, his faculties fully engaged by another task. She turns her back on him; stepping out of her heels, she removes the diadem from her silver hair and shakes it loose, long white fingers massaging her scalp languidly. Somehow, standing in the spartan cabin, wearing only her delicate underthings and a conspiratorial smirk, she has the manner of a queen. She pours herself the drink, not bothering to ask if he wants one.

Ironwood is no fool. He knows this is a balanced equation - she will give him what he so obviously craves, what is painted on his skin in torrid color, what blazes behind his eyes. And in return, he will allow her to conceal herself on board his ship, to fly away to Vale or to Mistral or to parts unknown. It is a mutually beneficial transaction in more ways than one, but it is a transaction. What little is left of him burns with shame, and with wanting - he cannot put an end to either.

“Aren’t you a little young to be drinking?” Like pressing on a wound; the loathsome thrill of self-sabotage.

“Is that really a thread you want to pull on, General?” She tilts her head, seeming genuinely curious.

Finally in motion, the Tin Man freshly oiled; he draws near to her, taking the glass from her hand with mechanical precision and setting it back on the sideboard. He stares at her for a long moment, giving her every opportunity to withdraw.

She does not. He grips both her wrists in one hand, cool metal circling, _bruising, _lurid lilac on skin like a snowdrift. She gasps, bites her lip, does nothing to stop him. Suffers herself to be forced back, shoulderblades like cut crystal against the chill steel of the cabin wall. She tosses her head, baring her throat; challenge in glacial blue. _Scars._ Everyone has their scars. He takes the bait, sinks his teeth in; feels her shudder and groan, hot and slick around the fingers of his free hand. The ice princess, burning him down. She catches the edge of his ear in her teeth and his head spins, a ragged curse escaping him.

Ironwood is no fool. Her presence on his ship, in his chambers, in his _bed - _almost - is a sight so rare and so lovely as to be almost unprecedented. It is a transactional arrangement; but one that could perhaps be extended, if both parties were amenable. The high spots of color on her bloodless cheeks, the way her voice gasps not his name but his _title, _implies that there may be room for negotiation. For now, he is grateful enough - for the taste of her, for the way her breathless keening makes it easy to forget, to _escape. _


	3. Escape

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Qrow/Ruby

He is never quite sure, and it haunts him. He isn’t _sure,_ and that makes it impossible to ignore - the sound of her fey giggle, echoing in his ears in his darkest moments, the way her porcelain skin shouts memories of her mother, his sister, himself. Is she his? Does she belong to him in the way she belongs to Tai, or is she his in the way her mother had once been his? Layers of love, of lust, of loss and longing, overlaid like the petals of a rose, impossible to separate without tearing the delicate beauty asunder. He is never sure she is his, only as sure as he can make her. Teaching her, against his better judgment, against his _nature;_ to rely on him, to trust him, to favor him. To hear _his_ voice in _her_ head, in all her darkest moments. It is selfish, it is ugly and base - it is the only way he knows to hold onto her, to fix her in his world where so many others have left it. 

He is drunk, essentially always; and so he cannot be sure if it is truth or a wretched, beautiful dream… When she comes to him, creeping silent into his room, his bed, his arms - the night before they face Salem, on the eve of the end of the world. Isn’t sure if he dreams it (or so he tells himself); the way she clings to him and shudders with sobs, wetting the worn fabric of his waistcoat with her tears. The way she says nothing, but closes her eyes as if facing battle; drags her lips, her teeth over the line of his jaw, the pulse in his throat, inexpert and _damning _\- for of course, she is a virgin, and doesn’t want to die that way. The way he cannot resist and doesn’t want to; long calloused hands pulling at the laces of her corset, talons ripping through layers of red and black that shred like tissue paper. A crow with its shining prize; a Grimm, its tender prey - the way his own voice groans her name into the dark, ragged and broken.

He isn’t sure, at the end - the dual realities clashing - is it him, mortally wounded, her silver eyes weeping bitter tears over his worthless carcass? _Don’t cry for me, Summer… _As undeserving now as ever. Or - and here, there is horror - is it _her?_ Ripped away from him, those same eyes wide and unseeing (as her mother’s had once been), a silent scream on her lips and her blood, red like roses on the white, white plain. 


	4. Cracks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yang/Blake

What a little thing, to cause such a schism; a tiny crack in the veneer of intimacy, ever widening. Compatible, in sync; in all ways save one. Many are not so lucky, to have a partner they work well with from the start; to have a partner whose touch is as welcome as their weapons. It should be a matter of gratitude, not of punishment. And yet.

Despite the fire and the fury, it is not in Yang’s nature to be cruel. It requires far less effort to be loving, to be attentive, to adore every lock of velvet black and every inch of porcelain. But the Faunus has a darkness in her, and darkness craves the light. Kisses and caresses are all well and good, but the feline beauty’s lover knows what she needs.

Cold, impersonal metal closes over a smooth, white throat; soft moan cut off as artificial fingers start to squeeze. The touch is gradual, almost tentative; but Blake thrashes and rasps out, “Baby, please… I need it… _I deserve it._”

The confession is almost a sob. In a flash of memory, there is blood, pain; the shock of separation. Cracks splintering across the surface of _everything’s fine. _Spiderwebs of crimson over the white of a Grimm mask.

Lavender eyes flash red; glowing scarlet accompanying the low hiss, the tightening press of steel. Sunshine, hidden in the shadows; darkness calling to darkness, drawing out the cruelty lurking in her bloodline - the crack, ever widening.

”I know you do, bitch.”


End file.
